San Diego County opened its eighth crisis stabilization unit in El Cajon on Monday, providing the same short-term resource for East County residents that has helped relieve pressure on hospital emergency departments in communities to the north and south.

The newest facility replaces a former county assessor’s satellite office at South Magnolia and West Douglas avenues, near the city’s community center and library.

The El Cajon $28 million crisis unit has 12 recliners and a freshly renovated space for private consultation, accommodating residents in need of immediate mental health services for up to 24 hours.

Pioneered in a handful of local hospitals, the county began opening stand-alone crisis units in Vista and Oceanside in 2021 and 2022. The pair of locations were a direct response to Tri-City Medical Center closing its behavioral health unit and crisis center in 2018, citing the need for prohibitively expensive repairs and difficulties with staffing.

Another unit attached in Chula Vista, attached to Bayview Hospital, a behavioral health facility, opened in 2023 with an additional unit attached to the emergency department at Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center in March.

Nadia Privara-Brahms, the county’s behavioral health director, said during a ribbon-cutting ceremony Monday morning that the heavy investment in crisis centers has drastically reduced mental health care visits to local emergency departments. County data for the 2024-25 budget year estimates that 11,000 adults treated at crisis stabilization units were diverted from inpatient care and 14%, approximately 1,800, were connected to inpatient care.

“Countywide, we have seen that this model of care is working,” Privara-Brahms said. “Across the CSUs locally, we saw 85% of admissions diverted from inpatient care.”

County Supervisor Joel Anderson, whose district includes most of East County, kept the pressure on for a center to the east capable of delivering the same kind of results.

“Right now, many of these folks end up in our emergency rooms, and they’re getting great service at the highest cost,” Anderson said.

Emergency departments, he added, can only do so much to focus on providing mental health care when they must also treat the full range of other medical needs from heart attacks and strokes to broken bones and chronic disease.

“Here, we’re laser-focused on that mental health, and we’ll be able to turn people around, stabilize them, and send them home,” Anderson said.

A key innovation with stand-alone crisis units has been the ability of law enforcement officers and crisis response team members to deliver residents picked up on 5150 holds for evaluation, skipping emergency departments when a patient needs mental health care, but not other services. A 5150 hold occurs when a first responder suspects that a person may be a danger to themselves or others or gravely disabled.

Because all emergency departments must operate on a triage basis, continuously moving the most-critical cases to the front of the line regardless of how long those with less-immediate medical problems have been waiting, 5150 holds are notorious for their ability to take first responders off their beats for hours per incident.

The county’s data tracking system indicates that drop-offs at crisis units take 20 to 25 minutes, contributing significantly to getting law enforcement officers and crisis team members back in service much more quickly than was previously the case.